Secularism and its ambiguities : four case studies / Carlo Ginzburg.

Foreword -- Chapter 1. Hobbes's Invisible Target: On the Reception of La Boetie's La servitude volontaire -- Chapter 2. Texts, Images, Reproductions: On the shoulders of Walter Benjamin -- Chapter 3. Sacred Sociology: A Few Reflections on the College de Sociologie -- Chapter 4. Fake News? -- Notes.

In the best micro-historical tradition, Carlo Ginzburg, himself one of the founders and icons of this genre of historiography, dissects four moments of European intellectual history. This book relives the experience that participants in the Natalie Zemon Davis Lecture Series at the Budapest campus of Central European University had in 2019 listening to Ginzburg's eloquent and engaging discourses. For the purposes of this volume he has re-edited and completed the leporello of cases charged with the inherent ambiguity between secularism and religions. Secularism is often identified with rejection or at least distancing from the sacred. However, if one assumes that secularism also appropriates and reworks the sacred, its ambiguities come to the fore. The dilemma accompanies the reception of La Boetie's Servitude volontaire between 1574 and today. Before Walter Benjamin, the lesser-known 19th-century Leon de Laborde defended the profanity of reproducing the arts. The tension around the secular pervades the case of the College de Sociologie (Paris, 1937-1939), an attempt to analyze the ideological components of fascism. The fourth lecture approaches a much-discussed contemporary phenomenon - fake news - from a long-term perspective. To what extent are some disturbing features of the world we live in the result of a long, tortuous, unpredictable trajectory?

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on October 02, 2023).

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